The amount of data carried on fiber optic systems continues to increase. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.3 ae task force is currently working on the definition of a 10 gigabit per second standard for Ethernet applications. Although optical transmission at 10 gigabits per second is possible with current technology, the price of obtaining a 10 gigabit per second data rate may currently be very high because of the necessity of using costly optical components.
Inexpensive optical components, such as fibers and lasers, may result in optical channels with limited bandwith, nulls, significant noise, distortion and multi-mode transmission characteristics. These characteristics may be problematical when attempting to achieve high data rates. Additionally, some of the fiber systems already in place comprise fibers and components of lower quality than are currently available in modern fiber optic systems. The characteristics of these systems may also be problematical when attempting to increase the transmission rates over such systems. There is therefore a need in the art to improve transmission capability of lower quality fiber optic systems through the use of inexpensive electronics. There is also a need for the use of channel coding and bandwidth efficient modulation techniques to overcome the limitations of low quality optical channels and result in higher transmission rates and reduced system costs.